Wild Fish Runs is a bi-monthly publication for
Washington Trout’s members and supporters to provide program updates and
networking assistance. Washington Trout is a conservation-ecology organization
dedicated to the preservation and recovery of Washington’s wild fish and the
habitat they depend on. Since 1989,
Washington Trout has sought to improve conditions for all of Washington’s wild
fish through research, advocacy, and habitat restoration. Washington
Trout is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.

COMING SOON TO A MAILBOX NEAR YOU…

The
next published edition of The Washington Trout Report is scheduled to be
done printing and on its way to your mailbox shortly after you receive this. The
WT Report contains detailed project updates and in-depth articles on the
state of salmon and habitat recovery and is a publication for WT members only.
If you do not receive the WT Report and would like to, please contact
Leah Hausman at leah@washingtontrout.org
or (425) 788-1167.

An
article in the February 6th Seattle Post-Intelligencer titled “Our
Troubled Sound: Spawning Coho are Dying Early in Restored Creeks” explored an
issue that Washington Trout crews began observing four years ago: in some
western Washington watersheds, many coho salmon are dying before they’ve had a
chance to spawn. Performing spawning surveys for Seattle Public Utilities (SPU)
since 1999, Washington Trout brought our prespawning mortality observations to
the attention of SPU; SPU and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) are
now attempting to determine the cause or causes of the crisis. Preliminary NMFS
tissue, blood, and bile analyses of the affected fish have not yet provided a
firm conclusion as to what is killing the fish, though polluted stormwater is
suspected.

The
issue demonstrates that restoring habitat structure alone without addressing
water quality, water delivery, development density, and even air quality issues
may not result in self-sustaining salmon populations in urban watersheds. It
underscores the necessity to preserve watersheds now that face impending or
future development pressures.

While
the article focused on coho prespawn mortality in the Seattle metropolitan
area, in 2001 Washington Trout crews also observed alarmingly high percentages
(17-30%) of coho prespawning mortality in watersheds managed for rural residences
and agriculture in the Snoqualmie Valley, 30 miles to the east of Seattle.
Meanwhile, coho prespawn mortality in two relatively pristine, unimpacted
western Washington watersheds ranged between 0 and 1%.

Given
the threatened or depressed status of populations of trout, salmon, freshwater
mussels, and other aquatic biota in the Pacific Northwest, water quality
conditions that are so inhospitable as to kill adult salmon within hours of
initial exposure are ecologically intolerable. To date, there have been no
coordinated regional efforts to document the magnitude and extent of the coho
prespawning mortality phenomenon and associated land use/water quality
relationships. Washington Trout is currently applying for funds to expand the
geographic scope of the coho prespawning mortality surveys, and to oversee the
coordination of similar efforts elsewhere in western Washington.

The
implications of elevated rates of coho prespawning mortality are immense,
ranging from drastic changes in urban/suburban stormwater management, to
changes in pesticide and herbicide regulations, to re-thinking how salmon
recovery efforts funded by public dollars should be prioritized. If you are
interested in reading the full article click here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/107460_coho06.shtml.

Seattle
Public Utilities Spring Spawning Surveys:

Washington
Trout is performing weekly winter/spring spawning surveys in Thornton Creek for
Seattle Public Utilities. The surveys began in mid-January and will continue
through May in order to enumerate steelhead/rainbow and cutthroat trout
spawning in the stream. Although steelhead/rainbow trout are rarely observed,
Washington Trout crews have documented a hardy population of cutthroat trout
within Thornton Creek. While data show that urban coho salmon are plagued by a
prespawning mortality phenomenon (see above article), remarkably, the cutthroat
do not seem to be.

Cutthroat
can potentially be of three life histories in Seattle creeks: resident, adfluvial, and anadromous
(sea-run). Residents spend their entire lives in creeks and spawn as fish of
6"-10" in length; adfluvials spend most of their lives in Lake Washington
and return to the creeks to spawn as fish of 12"-28" in length; and
sea-runs migrate to Puget Sound and return to spawn as fish of
12"-22" length. Like steelhead, cutthroat can spawn from January into
early June. The size of a cutthroat redd and gravel choice varies according to
the size of the female, with larger fish preferring larger substrate and making
larger redds, but in general cutthroat prefer substrates ranging from medium
gravel to large sand. Numerous large cutthroat trout, suspected adfluvials,
have been observed spawning in Thornton Creek this year, as were spawning
resident cutthroat. It is also possible that some of the larger cutthroat are
sea-run, not adfluvial. The scale or otolith sampling and readings necessary to
determine that have not yet been performed.

Today’s
city life for the cutthroat trout of Thornton Creek is more perilous than the
conditions that these fish evolved to meet. Culverts, weirs, and small debris
jams form impasses that prevent the cutthroat from migrating throughout the
watershed, and reduced instream cover leaves the large fish particularly
susceptible to blue heron and other predators. Testimony to their resiliency,
the cutthroat are still returning to Thornton Creek to find suitable spawning
habitat, and each other.

Cherry Valley
Feasibility Study:

Washington
Trout personnel have initiated an elevation survey of the Cherry Creek
floodplain, near Duvall. Using high precision survey equipment with accuracies
measured in millimeters, Washington Trout is collecting data that will be used
to produce high-resolution maps of the floodplain. These maps will be used to
perform analyses such as volumetric calculations, to predict effects of
proposed drainage alterations, and to illustrate the current and proposed
topography of the valley. Working in a crew of two or three, a Total Station is
used to collect X, Y, and Z attributes of points. The data will be imported
into GIS format in order to accomplish the analytical and visualization tasks.
The crew has been at work for two weeks, with another four to six weeks of
surveying expected.

Schoolhouse Creek
Restoration Project:

Elevation
surveys of Schoolhouse creek have been completed using the same method
currently being employed in Cherry Valley. This data is currently being
processed and will soon be delivered to the engineering firm R2 Inc., which has
been contracted to provide plans for the upcoming restoration of the
Schoolhouse Creek site. As part of this restoration water will be partially
diverted from an impassable culvert, into a wetland system. The topography of
the wetland and the course of Schoolhouse Creek will be important tools in
formulating a solution.

RESEARCH
AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT:

Adaptive Management Workshop:

On February 13 and 14, WT and
Seattle Public Utilities co-hosted a two-day workshop entitled, Making It
Work: Strategies for Effective Adaptive Management.

The concept of adaptive management
is being increasingly recognized as essential to managing natural resources
wisely. Effective adaptive management acknowledges and attempts to reconcile
the uncertainty inherent in ecosystems and in strategies for ecosystem
management. A carefully designed and implemented adaptive-management strategy
can help managers meet specific goals by appropriately adjusting their actions
within prescribed parameters and timelines in response to data generated
through effective monitoring. Adaptive management is much more effective at
managing the risks inherent in natural-resource exploitation, and could be
critically important in implementing a successful salmon-recovery effort.

Unfortunately, there appears to be
little consensus among resource managers on universal, practical criteria and
guidelines for developing and implementing effective adaptive management
programs. Amid this confusion, the concept has devolved into little more than a
fashionable buzzword in management circles, used to label a wide range of
management techniques and goals, some far from beneficial, some merely a
repackaging of previously failed practices, and most with little chance of successfully
meeting the anticipated outcomes of a rigorously developed adaptive management
protocol.

In order to be successful, an adaptive-management strategy must be
more than a vague intent to monitor a program and then spontaneously “adapt” to
the data (or not). A thorough protocol must incorporate clear goals and
intermediate thresholds toward those goals, a clear timeline for meeting the
thresholds, warning thresholds that will trigger management reactions, a list
of response and/or reaction options for individual thresholds, a monitoring
plan sufficient to provide the necessary data, timelines and thresholds for
meeting data-collection goals, and response-options for when data goals are not
met. Through a series of symposia and workshops, WT hopes to help develop a
usable definition or adaptive management by bringing together scientific and
technical experts on adaptive management from across the region and the
country. The first symposium was held in 2001 during the annual meeting of the
Society for Ecological Restoration in Bellevue, WA.

The focus of the 2003
workshop was to learn from some of the most experienced practitioners of
adaptive management in the country and to explore strategies for dealing with
adaptive management challenges in the context of a hypothetical situation.
There were over 150 people in attendance for the two days, bringing together
representatives from several Puget Sound cities and counties, National Oceanic
& Atmospheric Administration, The Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public
Land, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Northwest Power Planning Council,
US Fish & Wildlife Service, Environmental Protection Agency, WA Department
of Ecology, WA State Department of Transportation, and independent scientists
and engineers.

The final workshop,
scheduled for 2004, will focus on developing a recognized and potentially
certified framework for implementing effective adaptive management strategies.

Freshwater Mussels of the Pacific Northwest Workshop:

1/16 m2 quadrat used for mussel sampling

On February 19th, WT
Conservation Biologist Micah Wait presented the findings of a study concerning
the population of Western pearlshell mussels (Margaritifera falcata) in
King County’s Bear Creek at the Freshwater Mussels of the Pacific Northwest
Workshop in Vancouver, WA. The conference, put on by the Columbia River
Fisheries Program Office of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, was well
attended, with over 100 participants, including numerous state and federal
wildlife managers, graduate students, non-profit researchers, and other people
interested in freshwater mussels conservation.

Freshwater mussels are long-lived
creatures (up to 130 years) that make their living by filtering food, such as
algae, bacteria, and suspended microdetritus, from the water column. During an
early larval stage they are also obligate parasites on fish, and in the
Northwest, mussels infect salmonids exclusively. The larval forms are called
glochidia, which attach themselves to the gills of a host fish and remain for
1-3 weeks. The main purpose of the parasitic life stage is as a dispersal
mechanism for the juvenile mussels, and there is little if any harm done to the
fish. There doesn’t appear to be any direct symbiotic benefit to salmon or
trout from this relationship, but the species are clearly linked. And as
benthic filter-feeders, mussels are both indicators and contributors to water
quality and stream health. Historically, M. falcata was present in many
of the low gradient stream systems in the Puget Sound Lowlands, but due to
changes in water quality and physical stream habitats many of these populations
are extirpated or no longer viable.

Bear Creek is home to one of the
last remaining large populations of M. falcata in the Pacific Northwest.
The purpose of the study was to provide baseline data for the monitoring of the
Bear Creek Mussel population, with three main concerns: the location of mussel
beds within Bear Creek, the size and density of mussels in a bed, and the age
structure of the population. The proceedings of the conference as including
Power Point presentations can be found at the Columbia River Fisheries Program
Office website at http://columbiariver.fws.gov/mussel.htm.

WILD SALMON
RECOVERY INITIATIVE:

Hatchery Challenges

Read the full article in the
Spring 2003 Washington Trout Report. Don’t get the WT Report?

In January, Washington Trout and
Native Fish Society sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue to WDFW over
violations of the ESA at 20 steelhead and 11 coho hatchery programs in Puget
Sound. Among other impacts, we allege that Hatchery juvenile steelhead and coho
released into chinook habitats are preying on wild Puget Sound chinook
juveniles. Puget Sound chinook were listed as Threatened under that Endangered
Species Act in 1999. Any action that ends up directly or indirectly harming or
killing a listed species – called a “take” – is specifically illegal under the
ESA.

WDFW is required to submit to NOAA
Fisheries (formerly National Marine Fisheries Service) an application for take
authorization, called a Hatchery Genetic
Management Plan (HGMP), for any hatchery program that could potentially
impact PS chinook. The HGMPs have been overdue since January 2001 but to date
WDFW has not submitted a single plan for any steelhead or coho facility in
Puget Sound. If WDFW does not stop violating the ESA within the 60-days, we may
file a complaint in federal court.

Meanwhile, a similar suit filed by
WT and NFS over chinook hatcheries in Puget Sound has been moving forward. In
September 2002 we sued WDFW alleging that 18 hatchery programs were killing and
harming listed PS chinook in a number of ways, through direct take, site
impacts, genetic impacts, competition, and predation. When we filed our
lawsuit, WDFW finally submitted HGMPS for the chinook programs, also overdue
since January 2001; the applications have not yet been approved or rejected.
The lawsuit is in pretrial motions. WT staff and our attorneys have held
discussions with officials at NOAA Fisheries and with WDFW Director Jeff
Koenings and his top staff to discuss a process for evaluating the HGMPs,
improving hatchery practices, and possibly settling the case.

WT, joined by Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility, has also been challenging WDFW in court to stop
violating the ESA by harming PS chinook at the Tokul Creek Fish Hatchery in the
Snoqualmie River Basin. The hatchery water-diversion dam blocks fish passage,
and other site impacts at the facility are degrading chinook habitat. In
February, WDFW received preliminary approval from the Army Corp of Engineers
for $650,000 in funding and technical support to remove the fish passage
barrier. WDFW must now seek approximately $350,000 in matching funds from the
state legislature in order to qualify for the federal funding.

Tokul Creek is one of the most
important chinook spawning tributaries in the Snoqualmie Basin. The diversion
dam restricts anadromous spawning to the lowest 1/3-mile of creek. Removal of
the barrier would restore passage to an additional mile of high quality chinook
spawning and rearing habitat, and close to 60 miles of steelhead habitat. WT
and PEER are engaging in mediation with WDFW, seeking to reach an agreement on
details of the project, including timelines.

WT is represented in all three
cases by Richard Smith of Smith and Lowney PLLC.

Tangle Net Update; 2003 Fishery
Suspended

The 2003 Lower Columbia River Tangle-Net fishery has been
suspended since its first week due to high encounter rates with ESA-listed wild
chinook and steelhead. The fishery is targeted at Willamette River hatchery
spring chinook.

Last year, the 2002 fishery encountered approximately 20,000
steelhead and 15,000 wild chinook, released back into the river with the aid of
so-called recovery boxes. The smaller-mesh tangle-nets and the recovery boxes
(aerated tanks of water) are intended to reduce mortality for released fish,
allowing a “selective” fishery for hatchery fish while protecting listed wild
salmon, but as many as 50% of the listedfish
encountered in 2002 ultimately died before they could spawn. The single fishery
may have killed nearly 15% of the total 2002 run of federally listed Lower
Columbia River steelhead, even though steelhead were not the target species of
the fishery, and under Endangered Species Act regulations, the total impact
from all fisheries on LCR steelhead
is capped at 2%.

Working with a host of other conservation organizations, including
Native Fish Society, Oregon Trout, the Audubon Society, the Wild Steelhead
Coalition and Trout Unlimited, WT has drafted and submitted several sets of
analyses to state and federal management and policy-officials, recommending
that the fishery be significantly modified before being re-approved.

Our analyses were found compelling by officials at the Northwest Power
Planning Council, BPA’s Independent Science Review Panel, and ultimately NOAA
Fisheries (formerly the National Marine Fisheries Service). In September 2002,
Compact Managers approved a 2003 fishery with significant changes, including
restricting tangle nets to a maximum 4¼” multi-filament mesh, a reduction from
the 5½” monofilament nets that contributed to the high 2002 by-catch and
mortality rates. WT acknowledged the improvements, but continued to press for
more comprehensive changes. On January 31, NOAA Fisheries sent a letter to
Compact managers seeking “greater assurance” that the fishery would comply with
ESA regulations. They asked the Compact to meet several conditions, including actions
to minimize steelhead encounters and mortalities, specific limits on steelhead
encounters, and a monitoring program to track encounters and regulate the
fishery. These were all consistent with the analyses and recommendations made
by WT and others

To minimize
encounters with steelhead early in the season, managers began the fishery with
8” gill nets. Steelhead average slightly smaller than spring chinook, and many
were expected to be able to pass through the wide mesh without being captured.
However, the wider mesh was assigned a higher mortality rate for fish that are
captured than the smaller tangle nets, 50% for wild chinook, and 35% for
steelhead. The smaller tangle nets are assigned a 25% mortality rate for
chinook, and 20% for steelhead, but the 4-1/4” mesh is expected to capture more
steelhead.

A wild steelhead shows a massive scar

from its encounter with a “tangle net”

Based on the assigned
mortality-rates, managers imposed total-mortality quotas for different listed
stocks impacted by the fishery, 15% of the total run-size for Willamette River
Chinook, .59% for “Upriver” chinook (those returning to other Columbia Basin
ESUs), and 1.8% for LCR steelhead. The Compact proposed a complicated scheme of
mortality thresholds for determining when to switch gear-types or suspend
fishing.

Washington Trout acknowledged that
the gear-types, the mortality-rates assigned to each gear type, and the
total-mortality caps were significant improvements over the 2002 fishery.
However, we continued to be concerned over how managers would set
encounter-thresholds that would effectively prevent exceeding the mortality
caps, and we continued to draft and submit written comments to Compact managers
and NOAA Fisheries officials. Two days into the scheduled fishery, monitors
reported much higher than anticipated encounters with Upriver wild chinook, while encounters with listed
steelhead were too high to fish with 4 ¼” tangle nets. The fishery was
suspended indefinitely. Three small test fisheries (six boats) were held
on February 26, March 3, and March 10, but the results of those tests precluded
reopening the fishery.

It’s clear that the contributions and scrutiny of WT and other
organizations helped push managers to take responsible actions to conserve
ESA-listed wild fish populations. Suspending the fishery was the correct
response, and if managers had reacted similarly to the available data in 2002,
the high mortality on listed steelhead may have been avoided. However,
taken with results from a 2001 experimental fishery and the 2002 fishery, data
from the two days of fishing and three test-fisheries in 2003 strongly
reinforce the suggestion that tangle-nets used with recovery boxes are not
effectively non-lethal fishing gear, and may not be appropriate for conducting truly
selective fisheries.

Petition to List Lamprey under ESA:

Washington Trout and ten other
conservation organizations in Washington, Oregon and California submitted a
petition on January 23, 2003 to list four species of lamprey as threatened or
endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The four species are Pacific
lamprey, river lamprey, western brook lamprey, and Kern brook lamprey. Pacific
and river lampreys are anadromous and parasitic, while western brook and Kern
brook lamprey are neither. During their extended freshwater, juvenile period,
which can last 4-6 years, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the
species. While lampreys physically resemble eels, they are not related and are
an ancient, jawless fish. Diminishing lamprey populations has been a concern
since the early 1990s. Counts of Pacific lamprey in particular are being
recorded at perilously low levels at Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River,
Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua and the Gold Ray Dam on the Rogue River,
Oregon. Lamprey populations are being heavily impacted by water developments,
poor agricultural and forestland management practices, and rapid urbanization
of many watersheds.

Some of the arguments presented in
the petition to list lamprey include: increased habitat protection that will
benefit native salmonids and other fish species; they are an important food
sources for numerous species of birds, fish, and mammals, including seals and
sea lions, reducing predation on adult salmonids by seals and sea lions; and they
have important cultural and tribal significance. Washington Trout partnered
with the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Siskiyou Regional Education
Project, Umpqua Watersheds, Friends of the Eel, Environmental Protection
Information Center, Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity,
Northcoast Environmental Center, Umpqua Valley Audubon Society and Oregon
Natural Resources Council to submit the petition. More information can be found
at www.onrc.org/info/lamprey.

On February
28, the EPA and Corps published in the Federal Register that the deadline for
comments on the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was being extended 45
days, from March 3 to April 16. Hard work by American Rivers, the Clean Water
Network, and the many organizations in the River Agenda Initiative brought
about this extension, and now we must act to make sure our voices are heard.
The ANPRM and guidance issued on January 15 have removed protections from
isolated, intrastate, non-navigable waters (isolated wetlands), and is calling
into question whether several other types of waters should remain within the
jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. All of these waters are critically
important for the health of Washington’s streams, rivers, groundwater supplies,
and wildlife. For detailed information on the ANPRM, the SWANCC decision, and
how to submit comments, visit our website at www.washingtontrout.org/cwa_main.shtml.
Or you can submit a comment online through American Rivers at http://amriversaction.ctsg.com/wac/index.asp?step=2&item=2454.

Coho salmon in a tiny
tributary of the Snoqualmie watershed. This type of habitat could be
threatened by the proposed rollbacks to the Clean Water Act in the guidance
and ANRPM.

Pacific Northwest Snowpack Shrinking:

In February, Philip Mote of the UW
Climate Impacts Group released and presented the results of his study on trends
in the Pacific Northwest Snowpack over the last fifty years. Every year on
April 1st, Mote took measurements at 145 sites in Washington,
Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and BC’s Columbia River Basin. Of those sites, 141
registered decreases in water content of the snowpack, 90 had declines of 25%
or more, and 9 had at least a 60% decrease. Of those nine with the largest decreases,
eight are located in Oregon and one at Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic
Peninsula. The decline in water content is known as the snow-water equivalent,
and Mote directly attributes the decline to higher temperatures that reduce
accumulation in the snowpack and cause it to melt earlier. This combination of
factors, along with the prediction that the warming trend witnessed during the
20th Century will continue, pose significant concerns for the all
water-users in the region. Read their press release and more at: http://tao.atmos.washington.edu/PNWimpacts/Infogate.htm.

Clean Water for Salmon Toolkit:

The Clean
Water for Salmon Network has put together an action toolkit that includes fact
sheets, information resources and organizing tips to assist community members
working to get their city or county to adopt a policy that is protective of
salmon, water quality, and human health. The CWS Network has already had one
success with the adoption of a city policy in Lynnwood, WA, eliminating the use
on city property of pesticides that pose a significant health risk to salmon or
people. They also work with local groups in Spokane (WA), Bainbridge Island
(WA), Salem (OR), Portland (OR), Eugene (OR) and other cities around the region
to pass similar policies emphasizing pest prevention and restricting the use of
hazardous pesticides from parks, roadsides, and municipal properties.

Planning has begun for the 2003 WT
Wild Fish Soiree and Auction, which will be held Sunday May 18th at
the Pickering Barn in Issaquah. We are looking for a few good (actually, great)
volunteers to be on the Auction Volunteer Committee. The committee will help
solicit donations, follow-up with contributors, sell tickets/tables to the
event, and help with set-up on the day of the Auction! If you want to get
involved with the committee, contact Leah Hausman at leah@washingtontrout.org or call
(425) 788-1167.

VOLUNTEERS WHO
WORK 8 HOURS OR MORE TOWARDS THE AUCTION WILL RECEIVE DISCOUNTED OR FREE
TICKETS!

If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation for
the live or silent auction, please contact the WT office at (425) 788-1167 or
email leah@washingtontrout.org.

Photo by Jeff Edvalds

Pre-Bid on the Chile Trip!

Michael and Myrna Darland of Southern Chile Expeditions have made
a very generous donation to the 2003 Auction – an 8-day, 7-night fly-fishing
package for two to Yan Kee Way lodge in the Chilean Patagonia! Patagonia is
truly one of the most beautiful and unspoiled places left on earth. Yan Kee Way
offers incredible fly-fishing for trophy rainbow and brown trout, steelhead,
salmon, and sea-run brown trout, as well as other outdoor and vacation
adventures in a remote, spectacularly beautiful wilderness setting, while
accommodating their guests in four-star luxury. The package includes all
transfers, food, lodging, guides, and fishing licenses. You can exchange
fishing days for sport-adventure days, and Southern Chile Expeditions would be
happy to arrange a nice package for spouses to accompany two fishing partners.
Available dates for the Auction package will be during November and December
2003, and March 23rd to May 4th, 2004. The combined
package is valued at $8,500. We are
starting the bidding at the incredibly discounted total of $5000, with a
guaranteed price of $8,500. That’s
only $2500 per person! And as a generous bidding incentive, should the
winning bid for the two packages combined be in excess of $6,500 the winning
bidder may have their choice of any available package dates during the
2003-2004 season. You can bid on and even outright purchase the Chile trip
before the Auction by contacting Leah Hausman.
Read more about the trip and the pre-bidding rules and regulations online at www.washingtontrout.org/2003auction.shtml.

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Want to get more involved with Washington Trout? WT
appreciates your support and can use your volunteer help in a number of ways
including the annual WT auction, educational programs, mailing and office
assistance, staffing booths at public events, and participating in membership
campaigns and other special events. Check out the website for more information
on volunteer opportunities and our calendar, which lists
upcoming WT and other organizations’ events, meetings, classes, etc. Please
contact Leah Hausman at leah@washingtontrout.org
if you have an event you would like mentioned in Wild Fish Runs or
on the website!

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OTHER NEWS:

Congratulations Joseph and Bridget!

WT would
like to congratulate Joseph Yacker, our GIS Specialist, and his wife Bridget on
the birth of their beautiful baby daughter Emma on December 27, 2002.

WT Wish List:

There’s an odd item on our wish
list this time – large aluminum cans, like the ones some of you may buy your
coffee or tomatoes in. If you purchase items packaged in the large tins (28
ounces or more), please save them, wash them out, and send them to us. WT plans
to use these cans in a very unique way to decorate at the Wild Fish Soiree
& Benefit Auction in May.

Shopping Online?

You can do your usual online
shopping and help support Washington Trout by shopping through the WT shopping
village at GreaterGood.com.
Choose from more than 100 brand name retailers like eBay, Amazon.com, PetsMart,
The Disney Store, Dell, Lands’ End and many more. Up to 15% of everything you
buy benefits Washington Trout. To go directly to the WT shopping village, visit
http://www.greatergood.com/partner/washingtontrout.

WellSpent.Org
is another great source for online shopping. WellSpent.org has thousands of products - including electronics,
software, computers, tools, appliances, camping gear and much more - available
at discount prices. Every purchase you make generates a donation for the
non-profit cause of your choice. So visit http://www.wellspent.org/, search
for Washington Trout, and help yourself to some great gifts - you'll be helping
us, too!